Does anyone have any experiences with using negative offset rears for an FD?

Changing the offset by more than 2" has got to make even the stock wheels hit the fenders. Never mind screwing your suspension geometry.



Can you be a little more specific about what your talking about? https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...1047683561.gif

negative offset will either..... make your tires eat away your bumper, or in the case that you get it to fit...... you will have one skinny tire

Sure I can, I was just curious to see if anyone had any first hand knowledge of anything like FD's and negative offset rear rims for the purpose I'm considering.



What I'm talking about is deep dish rims with big lips. You see, even with a 50+ offset and 10 inch width the lip is still gonna be like 3 inches, plus, the wheel will be deep on the lip, but stuck outward in the center. That's something I don't like.



What I've always wanted is to have a rim which would curve inward and still have a nice 3.5-4 inch lip. Please, no flames since this is just a preference of mine, your opinions are always welcome BTW.



I don't care if I'd have to roll the fenders or cut them and widen them or whatever. I was just concerned that those rims would mess up the suspension and be unusable on a daily basis.



The offset would be -7, have a 4" lip, and be 10.5" wide in the rear. The front I don't really care about much, I'd go with whatever the best offset would be for a 9" wide rim and 255's.



I found the perfect rims with those specs, here's a pic, be amazed.



Rims are Do-Luck DoubleSix and yes, that's a Supra LOL.

Another pic, the rims on this car and -5 offset with a 3.5 inch lip BTW, the -7 would yield the 4 inch one on the same 10.5 rim.



I spoke to Jonathan from Do-Luck USA and this info is straight from him.

Go out and grab the current issue of Grass Roots Motorsports. Starting on page 167 there's a long breakdown of how offset can affect suspension geometry.

You couldn't summerize the bullet points for me? https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...#>/biggrin.png

It's 3 pages long with diagrams!



Just buy it already! https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...#>/biggrin.png



Effectively it's this: you will end up with reduced effective spring rate, increased bearing load, more sensitive to wheel balancing, increased tramlining (car follows grooves in pavement) and more rapid tire wear. It also puts more leverage on the rubber bushings in the suspension, causing problems with toe & I imagine more wheel hop on the 7.

God damn, all of that just because of negative offset?

That's just for the rears. It monkey's with the steering if you do it in the front too.



It's not the end of the world, but if you want to do that, why not buy a poser car? Like that Supra, for example? https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...#>/biggrin.png

Very funny Mr. I don't get it though, what in the design would make the wheels do all of that?

It makes the suspension arm longer. That puts more leverage on the spring, causing the rate to go down. But because this length is added outboard of the bearing, that increased leverage is applied to the bearing first. Any imbalance in the wheel also has leverage now, and is more noticeable. Following tracks in the road is more common with wide tires, and now that they're mounted out farther they now have more leverage against the steering tie rods as well.



Basically with the wheel pushed out farther via offset any forces on the tire have a longer arm to use. This will affect both forward and back (toe, in essence) as well as up and down movement.



As for the tire wear, I imagine it might be a symptom of all the other problems?



There are benefits to a wide track and long suspension arms, but you have to get the width in the suspension arm itself, not via wheel offset.

So is there a way for me to alter the suspension so that when this offset is applied, there would be no setbacks as far as the suspension goes? I mean, is there a way to sort of trick or build the suspension in accordance with the wheels so that there would be no differences in either set up (positive offset or negative).

No. You could go to a slightly stronger spring to fix that bit, but then you'd need a little more damping.



The leverage on the wheel bearing can not be fixed.



It's not like your wheel is going to fall off 10 miles down the road. But this will cause them to wear out faster and your car to handle differently.



Personally I wouldn't do it. I'm more into the performance of these cars, and the FD has one of the best factory suspension geometry's ever made. I wouldn't mess with it, because while it may not be perfect, I'm sure not the one to improve it. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...#>/biggrin.png



Plus I think the cheesy fender flares and 'widebody' kits look like ass on these cars.

Understood, thanks Tice LOL. I think I'll get the rims with the FD offset.

Check the lip on the Gram Light Pros.

Not my style of rim, I could get a bigger lip from the Borbet Type T's and save some cash by doing it but it's just not what I want. I think I'm gonna explore this a bit more I think.



See, I asked Do-Luck if they could make me an 11" wide rim so I could get the lip, keep the FD offset and all would be well. But they said no LOL, and I just figured that I'd need a seriously wider rim then 11 to get the 4" lip and rim depth I like.

I just thought about this a bit more.



Tice you said that altering the offset by more then 2 inches would have these bad suspension characteristics or somehting to that effect? So, a -7 offset on top of the +50 one would yield a difference of 57mm to a proper FD fitment right?



Well, 57mm is rougly 2.3 inches, how big of a problem could a quarter + of an inch really present?

I only used "more than 2 inches" because you mentioned a negative offset. With 2" = 50.8 mm I assumed you would have "more than 2" offset" if you had ANY negative offset.



The article doesn't mention when these bad effects start to take place.

Good, you made it sound like there was no chance in hell of making this work or have it work. Plus, if the negative offset is so little (which it is), I highly doubt there that the bad effects would show to be a huge problem in the suspension setup.



Anyone else wanna chime in?

The CHANGE in offset is over 2"!



That IS a lot! https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/blink.png

I can't say much here, just that you should pm me with the lip depth you desire and the tire size you intend to use. There are always sacrifices, however if this is what you want than you gotta pay the price. lol.



i'll go over the details with you via pm if you're interested. If the do luck wheel is the one you want than my further assistance will not help as you've acquired all the info you need.



I see that you would need at least a 25 to 30mm fender flare to get this -7 to work. I don't know tho. Just did that in my head real quick.



Peace, rishie

A sacrifice is to spend extra money on fender flares, a sacrifice is to have Do-Luck make me a custom wheel (not possible), a sacrifice is to have Veilside extrude 4 inch lips out of their Evolution 5's for a lot of money, but to have my suspension fucked and probably having to spend a thousand ****** dollars to have it fixed and still be stuck with a set of $3K rims just isn't ****** worth it to me. I don't have that kind of cash to blow.



There has to be a way to setup the suspension to fit these wheels without messing things up. There's always a way LOL, and I won't have any problems getting fender flares, I can order a set of 50mm widebody ones from Japan for quite a reasonable price right now.



What's the stock offset anyway? I wanna do these calculations without having to guess about how much offset the wheels will really have. Tice, I just understood what you said about the wheels having more then 2 inches of offset and it being a lot, I kinda forgot that those 2 inches would be EXTRA offset rather then just that from zero offset.



In other words, the -7 wold make the inner side of the wheel lose 4 inches to the hub. Kinda like this gheto ass pic LOL.



Imagine that the negative offset rim is the same size, that pic just illustrates the problem that the inner side is way to close to the center of the hub putting more stress on it.

we have +50mm offset, which is a lot compared to other cars.

Thanks, I forgot the pic.